Wednesday, December 31, 2008

You have spoken

Well, four of you have spoken.

And I think you are right. I cannot use that fabric to cover my chairs. So I am asking for your help again. I need to find some really amazing upholstery weight fabric. I have looked and I have a few options, but I would love to see what ideas any of you have. It doesn't have to go with my apartment. It does have to go with my brown microsuede couch ;(. Uggg. I am looking for something with a vintage modern look.

Ideas?

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

I need some advice

I spend a considerable amount of Ethan's nap time browsing the Internet for fabrics. I don't really sew and I am not a quilter. But some fabrics seem to try to entice me to pick up such a skill. Today, for example, the Lush line by Erin Michaels is talking me into learning how to upholster.

I have these chairs that I found at Goodwill for $10 a piece. They are old colonial wood frames with nasty fabric seats and backs and I decided that they would be amazing with a new paint job and some modern fabric. I have a girlfriend (who saw the chairs first, but selflessly let me get them) who says she will help me re-cover the cushions.

I found the above fabric and decided immediately that I would use it to cover these chairs. The only problem is this fabric is not upholstery weight. It is quilting weight. I e-mailed the gal selling it on Etsy and asked her what she thinks I should do. She said I could use it to upholster chairs if I used another, stronger fabric underneath it.

I'm still uneasy. What do you think I should do?

If I ended up going through with all of this, I would use these fabrics to cover couch pillows.

Monday, December 29, 2008

If you can laugh at yourself...

...you'll enjoy this book.

Thanks Al!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Happy Holidays

I know what you are wondering. And the answer is "water and Coke."

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Robert Ryan


The first Etsy shop that I ever tagged as a favorite was Robert Ryan's . I continually visit this London-based artist's shop just too look at his prints, because I definitely can't afford to actually purchase one. I especially love the little phrases in each piece.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Copy-cat candy

Sometimes when I'm blog surfing I notice that people tend to blog about what other people blogged about. The posts are usually about the things that just have to be shared - blogger to blogger- like this peppermint bark found here, who found it from here.

I made it last night and I think it is awesome! So thanks for sharing!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Holiday partying






Ryan's work Christmas party was held at the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. It was really cool. There was lots of food, aircraft of every kind and drunk people dancing - my favorite part of every holiday party.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Conclusions about Twilight - you knew it was coming

I was one of the thousands of women older than 13 who attended Twilight unaccompanied by their 13-year-old daughter. I might have gone in with low expectations. And yes, I probably subconsciously hoped that I would like this movie.

But seriously, somewhere between the part when Bella cringes at Edward's touch and the moment where Edward calls Bella his "little spider monkey" (we all cringed at that), I took a breath and had two thoughts: first, that I was actually really enjoying myself; and second, that I was never going to utter or blog about that first thought for fear of being parodied on Seriously, So Blessed.

So I'm not going to... really. Other than to say this: I liked it (you can cringe again if you want).

And I may be almost 12 years past my 13th birthday but I think these guys are hotties ;).

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Boots with an even better story

I have this character flaw that, unfortunately, comes to many people who work in the news. Only I had it long before I was ever even interested in working at a paper. I actually believe I was born with it.

It's sort of a hope for bad things to happen. I call it backwards pessimism. Take, for example, when Y2K didn't produce mass hysteria I was terribly disappointed. I mean, the microwave didn't even break down.

I remember, years later, carefully listening to the police scanner at work as details of a terrible accident unfolded. I wasn't even going to cover this story, but I thought of it as just that - a story, and a captivating one that everyone would read first the next day. It wasn't until I read my co-worker's article in the paper the next day that I realized how horrific my original reaction of excitement had been.

These awful feelings rose back to the surface yesterday as I drove past a house in my neighborhood. The property was swaddled with police tape and cops and I knew something bad had happened there. I gawked like the rest of the drivers creeping past the crime scene. Only I think I was more interested than the other drivers.

Earlier this year, I bought these awesome vintage boots (pictured) and patterns on that very lawn from the older couple living in that very house. I drove home yesterday, wondering what those elderly folks could possibly have done to warrant that swarm of police officers. Of course I imagined the worst and I checked the news periodically throughout the rest of the day to find out what it was.

Turns out that yard sale was likely a moving sale for the older couple now living in Florida. Their renter, however, allegedly murdered a man early yesterday morning in their home. So, of course, I can't keep this to myself. I'm not happy about a murder two blocks from my house. But am I awful to admit that I think this makes my boots even cooler?

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Conclusion number two: Something about Utah hair? I know, not a conclusion. This is a rambling post.

Utah hair: Purposefully voluminous and straight.



Just more than two years ago, I was wandering through my local Costco. In my quest for large items to fill up my new and empty apartment, I found a phenomenon I like to call Virginia hair. It consists basically of this: A large cowlick on either side of the part, strange kinks pulling the hair in all directions with fuzzy short hairs (with a slight resemblance to hairs that cover another part of the body) sticking straight up. In order to get this look one must roll out of bed, put her clothes on and walk out the door. Or for a more fuzzed out look, she must wash her hair in between steps one and two and then walk out the door.

It bothered me at first, that many Virginian women don't do their hair. And then summer came. I'd wake up and complete my usual regimen - shower, glaze my locks with product, blow-dry, straighten, spray, touch-up and finally, walk out the door. But in less than ten minutes I was sporting Virginia hair.

Humidity may be my skin's best friend, but it will never win over my hair. And so it is with most women in my area, who tend to leave their hair alone because it is only a waste of time to do anything with it.

This was strange at first for a girl who comes from the land of perfectly-coiffed hair. Hair is big in Utah - in both senses of that phrase. If you graduated from high school in Utah, chances are that at least 25 percent of the gals in your class went on to become hairstylists. And you can always count on getting a good hair cut while visiting Utah.

But hair is also big literally. Probably 50 percent of those female classmates manipulated their hair in some fashion to give it extreme body. Take my seventh grade self, for example, sleeping with an over-sized and incredibly uncomfortable velcro curler on the crown of my head in order to get just the right amount of volume, which, at the time, was at least two inches off my head (and ended up looking just like I was still wearing a curler in my hair throughout the day). The other night my girlfriends (the ones from Utah, of course) told me of a technique that would have really helped me in the volume department. Apparently, it's called back-combing (a nice word for ratting) and it's all the rage in Utah.

After graduating from middle school and discovering that hair just wasn't my thing, I moved on from large voluminous hair to my boring blonde locks. And now I spend less time doing my hair than ever in my life (on the days that I do it - Sundays). I'm not proud of this but I have kind of let my hair go ;(.

On our Thanksgiving trip to St. George, however, I did my hair almost every morning! That was until I went shopping with the sisters-in-law on black friday. We hit up Target and as we walked to the toy aisle, I had to stop and look around. There was not a hair out of place in the entire store and the place was packed. Perfect (albeit a bit high) hair was everywhere - on moms, on daughters, on grandmothers on granddaughters. I was both impressed and a little grossed out. Everyone looked fabulous. What's so wrong with that? Yet, I left the store wanting to mess my mid-length tresses up and never use my straightening iron again.

So I guess I'm embracing my Virginia hair now. And I'll go with Utah hair on Sundays.

Virginia hair. Voluminous and naturally wavy/frizzy. But not on purpose.


Cache Valley, Utah hair. Voluminous and permified. Entirely different blog post altogether. Maybe some other time.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Observation number one: St. George is beautiful


I can't count how many times I have been to St. George, Utah. Yet on all of those family vacations and road trips, I don't believe I ever noticed how red buttes jut out in front of large mountains like pawns in front of a king. I never once wondered why porous black stones sit out-of-place on hard red rock, like they consciously rolled there when no one was looking. Or discovered that the salmon-hued rock looks much more vivid on sunny days.

These are just a few of the wonders I beheld on this trip back after over four years away from St. George. In the midst of my awe, I decided to get a family photo in this beautiful place.Neither the picturesque background nor the cute family really turned out on film though ;(.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

I'm back...

... and full of interesting observations made while in Utah and Las Vegas, including one lengthy thought on Utah hair (and it's not all bad!). While I adjust back to life without cousins for my kid to play with and sisters-in-law to gossip with, I need a day or two off the radar. So here is a worthy subject to blog about that won't take too much time out of my unwinding time.

I love these photographs so much that I am now longing for an old farm house to deck out in vintage modern garb and then grow old in ;).


These animal prints are on sale at Sharon Montrose's Etsy shop.